


i saw something sitting on your bed

by skvadern



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Dissociation, Dreams and Nightmares, Horror, Masturbation, Mild Erotic Horror, Mindfuck, Monsterfucking, Other, Sexual Fantasy, creepy monster flirting, is an absolutely brilliant tag to have on ur fic, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:00:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26837881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skvadern/pseuds/skvadern
Summary: The eyes that meet hers in the water-spotted mirror are wide and slightly bloodshot, eyelids dark with the smeared remains of her eyeliner. She stares back at them, trying to convince herself that the tired-faced woman she’s facing is her.In the aftermath of her first real, proper supernatural encounter, Sasha tries to sort out her new reality.
Relationships: Sasha James/Michael | The Distortion
Comments: 7
Kudos: 69
Collections: Shipoween 2020 - The Halloween Ship Exchange!





	i saw something sitting on your bed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nelja-in-English (Nelja)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nelja/gifts).



> helloo exchange giftee hope u like ur porn weird ahaha im so sorry. title from in the room where you sleep by dead mans bones

The eyes that meet hers in the water-spotted mirror are wide and slightly bloodshot, eyelids dark with the smeared remains of her eyeliner. She stares back at them, trying to convince herself that the tired-faced woman she’s seeing is her. It’s a familiar disconnect, but it hasn’t been this bad in months, not since she quit Artefact Storage.

As she watches, her hands raise from her sides, up and up until they reach her face. She tracks them distantly, still settled in that empty calm, until they come to rest lightly on her eyelids.

Her own fingers push her eyelids down and then press in on them, hard enough to set off a deep ache in the back of the sockets. Her vision melts into a pulsing kaleidoscope of green and purple, patterns forming and fading in the darkness, and Sasha James manages to climb back into herself.

When she opens her eyes, the face looking back at her from the Archives’ bathroom mirror looks more like her. Exhausted, a bit shell-shocked, unhealthily grey, but her.

Breaking eye contact with her reflection, Sasha splashes cold water on her face, shuddering a little at the shock of it. Then she forces herself out of the bathroom.

On her way out, Tim stands up from his desk and trots over to meet her. He’s trying to play if off as casual, but she knows him; he’s been waiting for her to come out of the loo to grab her. Forcing the best smile she can manage right now, she faces him.

“D’you want me to come back with you?” he asks, almost perfectly casual if you weren’t looking at how his hands twist together under the table. “You know, make sure you don’t get lost on the Victoria line, what with all those changes.” He wiggles an eyebrow, inviting her in on the stupid joke, and Sasha’s gut pulses heavy and hurting.

She _likes_ Tim. She _trusts_ Tim. She doesn’t want to start lying to him.

“I’ll be okay,” she says instead, and then before she can think too hard about it, “sorry.”

Tim blinks at her. “Hey, no, don’t apologise. You want processing time, I understand. Just…” he reaches out, tentative in a way he hasn’t been since they fixed their friendship, and pats her shoulder. “Look after yourself, okay?”

“I will,” Sasha replies, and concentrates hard on meaning it.

Walking out of the Archives is the strange relief it always is, some clever little animal instinct finally relaxing and easing its hackles back down even if the rest of her is more worried about what waits outside the Institute. She feels just that little bit lighter, that little bit less on edge, like something that had been tickling the back of her neck the whole time she was downstairs has eased up.

The sound of her boots on the marble floor of the Institute’s atrium rings loud in her ears, and she walks faster, until she’s through the doors and out into the cool April morning. There’s a worm squirming up the steps, a little sliver of silver, and Sasha’s boot comes down on it so hard she jars her knee.

~~~~~

The door to the abandoned pub creaks open, and Sasha glares at it, a bit affronted by the ridiculously ominous noise. She came here in broad daylight, this time; the least it could do is not sound like the set of a horror film.

Inside is brighter than it had been, sunlight trickling through the gaps in boarded-up windows, catching on the swirling motes of dust and casting little twisty reflections from the scattered remains of the barback mirror. The walls flock with graffiti and decay, and while the air has cleared significantly since the last time she was here, she can still smell that earthy, rotten taint. Like an old cellar, left to moulder.

Where Timothy Hodges’ corpse had been is nothing but a black, mildewy stain, soaked into the plaster and floorboards. Sasha doesn’t want to think about that stain, about what it must have felt like to rot alive, but her mind keeps tugging her back to it anyway. She shakes her head hard, trying to clear it.

The worm corpses are still here, or at least some of them. They’ve decayed fast, are barely recognisable where they melt into the wood, but at the edge of the mass she can pick out individual curled shapes. It’s enough to be certain she hadn’t imagined them. Had she been worried about that? She hadn’t thought so, but it’s still an almost painful relief to be certain.

Shaking her head again, she casts the beam of the torch she remembered to bring this time around the room. It catches off a strange patch of… something on the far wall.

Sasha isn’t quite sure why it’s caught her eye, but she wanders over to it anyway. Passing out of the better-lit area and stepping further into shadows sends a skittish little shiver down her spine, even though she knows the monster is dead.

There’s a discolouration to a tall, rectangular patch of wallpaper, tucked away in the shadow of the bar. The rest of the room is papered in something flaking and faded, splashed all over with graffiti, and at first she can’t tell what’s wrong with this section – only that something _is_ wrong with it, her eyes able to pick out the line between the normal wall and this.

She plays the beam of the torch over it, trying to figure it out. Maybe the colours – the graffiti a little too bright, neon shades melting into each other – or the shadows cast by the peeling paper – they seem to have a hue and weight of their own, like they’ve been painted on too. Her fingers itch to touch, and she curls her hands into tight fists. No, no, she is _not_ going to be that horror movie character.

Head tilted to the side, she studies the rectangle. It occurs that the height it’s at, the width and the way the bottom sits flush to the floor, it looks kind of like the outline of a doorway. Like she could just put her hand to the warped wall and press, and push it open. Walk through.

Sasha stuffs her hands in her pockets and gets out of there before she can have any more bright ideas.

~~~~~

Dinner is takeaway Indian because she truly can’t be fucked to cook right now, and as nice as her local restaurant is, the food sits uneasily in her stomach. Her skin itches, phantom… somethings moving across it, and the shadows don’t look entirely right. It’s just her mind playing tricks on her, she’s sure it is, but that cool logic doesn’t soothe her.

Eventually, Sasha gives up on the telly and goes to bed. At least the bedroom is meant to be dark, and she can always stick on a podcast to keep her mind from drifting.

She takes a shower first, temperature up as high as it’ll go. The pipes complain, but at least the heat burns away any of that weird, prickling feeling, and she comes out feeling almost human again.

Once her teeth are brushed and her hair’s wrapped for bed, Sasha bites the bullet and peels off the half-unstuck dressing Martin had put over her arm. The wound is held together with a couple little butterfly stitches, and as far as she can see, it doesn’t look too bad – it’s scabbed well, and there’s no heat or swelling. Still, something about it makes her press closer to the mirror, practically climbing the sink to get a better look.

The edges of the cut are… they’re not moving. They’re _not_. Or, at least, they don’t move when she looks at it straight on. But when she tips her head to the side, glances out of the corner of her eye…

She could swear they’re starting to twist, just a little. Curve up at the corner. Like a smile.

Sasha jerks away from the mirror, breath coming short and sharp. She dives under the sink and roots through the medicine cabinet, grabbing a dressing and slapping it on. The wound probably doesn’t need it, it’s that small, but she wants it covered and tucked away where she won’t be tempted to keep looking, to touch it and see if it twists under her fingers. That way madness lies, she knows it does – there’s nothing there, just like there’s nothing wriggling over her skin, or lurking in the shadows of her home. The cut is normal. She’s just scared, and her stupid brain is responding to that fear, spotting threats where they don’t exist in a misguided attempt to keep her safe.

Even knowing that, she switches the light on in her bedroom before turning the bathroom light off.

Settling into bed with only the bedside lamp on feels like baring her throat; even the comfy, familiar furnishings of her room look untrustworthy. As hard as she tries to rationalise, Sasha can’t quite make her arm stretch over the gulf between her mattress and the lamp’s switch. She feels like a kid again, overimaginative and nervy, and she _hates_ it.

Angrily, she shoves her hips further down the mattress, yanking the covers over her head and drawing her knees up. If she can’t manage to turn the light off like a grown adult, at least she can take her mind off this strange, creeping dread for a little while.

When she dips the first exploratory finger between her legs, she’s distantly surprised to find that she’s wet already. A quick swipe gathers some of it and she starts to circle her clit, slowly but with plenty of pressure. It’s been half a week since she’d last gotten off, and the touch feels great, even better when she grinds her hips up gently, wriggling a little with that first, sweet spark of pleasure.

At first, she just touches herself, mind blank, letting the sick tension she’s been carrying the whole day recede to the back of her mind. Still, Sasha’s never been able to get off to physical sensations alone, and after a bit more teasing, she starts to cast around for something.

There’s memories, but she always feels a bit awkward fantasising about Tim after everything that went down, and there hasn’t been anyone else for longer than she really wants to think about, long enough that the encounters are faded and curling at the corners like old photographs. Sasha bites her lip, trying to come up with something better as she slips her fingers down. She’s not gentle with herself, not when there’s enough slick to ease the way as she pushes two fingers into her cunt, groaning under her breath at the stretch.

Something to fill her up, maybe. Big and slick and relentless, sliding into her slow and steady. She’d squirm on it, shifting her hips forward and backwards, until they pinned her down properly, hands on her hips – but then her wrists would be free… maybe she can work in a second pair of arms, or even some tentacles…

 _Blond curls sliding around her wrist, slippery-soft as they restrain her, bury her hands in their mass. She yanks, but all it does is_ _laugh, that horrible warbling warping cackle dizzying her as the world sways around her like oil in water_ -

Sasha snaps her eyes open, yanking her fingers away from her clit and tearing the covers off her head with her clean hand. She stares up at the ceiling, featureless white.

”What the fuck?” she whispers to herself.

This is far from the first time Sasha’s brain has gone a messed-up direction while fantasising and she’s had to take a moment to recalibrate; she’s a grown adult with weird kinks and a lot of internet hours logged. It is, however, the first time she’s caught herself fantasising about an actual real monster that had literally _tried to kill her_.

“What the fuck?” she says again, louder. The bedroom, quiet and empty, doesn’t seem to have any more idea than she does.

Groaning in disgust, Sasha grabs the baby wipes out of her bedside table and wipes off her fingers, before flopping down on the bed and shoving her earphones in. She navigates to the next episode of _Flash Forward_ , cranking up the volume, and represses as hard as she possibly can.

Not going to happen. Not even slightly. She’s going to learn about the ins and outs of a paper-free future, and then she’s going to go to sleep.

~~~~~

The dilapidated old pub smells of dust, a little of mould, but not at all of that rotten-cellar stink. Even though it’s chilly with the night wind slipping in through broken windows and the gaps between boards, Sasha can’t help feeling more comfortable here.

She’s only in her pyjamas, she notes distantly. That’s odd. Why would she leave the house without her coat?

The torch in her hand clicks on, casting a beam of soft orange light down to the floor. Shadows shimmer and dance at its edges, dust curling through them like mud through river currents. They skitter away when she sweeps the beam over them, reforming and bleeding back into the darkness.

Feet uncomfortably tight in her trainers – she’s still wearing her fluffy socks, for some reason – Sasha makes her way slowly over the filthy carpet. Her body responds sluggishly, like she’s six drinks in, but every step makes her feel like she’s floating. Like maybe if she jumped upwards, she’d come unmoored from gravity and bob up to the ceiling.

In the far corner, where she’d noticed that discoloured wallpaper, sits a door. It’s tall, as doors go, pale yellow wood with a strange, twisting grain, and a brass doorknob that glints unsettlingly in the torchlight, the light spreading further over its surface than it should.

She steps further into the room, and a hand curls itself round her shoulder.

Sasha freezes, hardly daring to breathe. She can see the pale, sharp, twisted fingers splaying over her chest, can feel the weight of the thing pushing her tensing muscles down and the whisper-gentle scrape of an impossible bone against her throat. The ease with which those fingers had slid into her flesh… moving right now would not be smart.

The torch drops from her numbed fingers and rolls away, its light cutting out abruptly.

She sucks in a dust-laden breath, clamping down on the cough that wants to ruin her perfect stillness. “Michael?” she whispers into the darkness in front of her. “Is that you?”

A ghostly chuckle winds its way into her ear, and something silky-soft brushes against her cheek. She thinks she can sense it, a looming swaying presence against her back, almost but not quite touching her.

“What do you want?” she asks, when she can’t bear to let the silence hang any longer.

The hand on her shoulder flexes, tilting her backwards, and Sasha stumbles, too disoriented to keep her balance. With a gasp, she falls back into something soft and yielding, warm against the thin cotton of her pyjama top – a strange, pulsing warmth that seems to cling to her, somehow viscous.

The finger that had tucked itself around her throat cinches tighter – not choking her, just holding her life in its grip. She stops breathing entirely, and the finger tightens, pointed tip pressing in painfully hard.

Slowly, Sasha takes a breath. The stabbing fingertip releases her, the finger loosening gently. It feels like a reward.

She keeps breathing.

A voice, high and spiralling, slithers down from just above her ear. “You came back. I wondered if you would, and you did. You spotted me.” A giggle, as sharp and twisted as a corkscrew.

“Spotted-“ Sasha shuts up and thinks, remembering the door-shaped distortion in the wall. Her eyes fall on the door that should not be there, handle still gleaming invitingly against the shadows. “That’s you?”

“Mmm, I suppose,” Michael replies, and Sasha could swear she feels a tongue flicker against the shell of her ear, hellishly hot and leaving an aching menthol chill on the flesh it touched. Her knees feel like they’re melting, the joints turning gooey and liquid.

Her thighs slide together, and she feels the sticky slickness at the top of them for the first time. Once again, she freezes.

No way. No _fucking_ way.

“How does that work, then?” she asks, groping for something that isn’t the utter insanity of her libido. “Do you manifest the door, or is it a part of you, somehow? Where does it lead?”

Michael giggles like a migraine. “Curious little thing, aren’t you? So, so very curious. I could taste the fear on you, when you sat across from me – could have drunk it out the air, where it welled from your pores. But you came here anyway, to face the hive.”

“For the others,” she whispers through numbing lips. “You said- you told me they were in danger.”

“I did,” it says, and she can feel its hair shift against her skin as it nods. Then again, the nest of curls could just be moving on its own. “But we both know that’s not the _entire_ reason you followed me. You needed to _know._ ” It says _know_ in the bright, delighted tone of a student slipping a swear word past a censor.

“It was important,” Sasha replies through a jaw that won’t relax, no matter how hard she tries. “If I hadn’t, we could have been facing an attack on two fronts.”

“And you would never have satisfied that curiosity of yours,” Michael replies sagely, “I understand.”

Sasha feels a spark of anger settle in her gut, and she welcomes it and the strength it gives her. “What are you angling for? What do you _want_ , Michael?” She pushes the words through her throat as hard as they can, and they almost seem to fizz on her tongue.

Michael _laughs_ , so loud Sasha’s head suddenly feels like it’s exploding. She wants to curl into herself, but its sharp, swollen hand is still pressing into her skin, only a think layer of cotton between it and her flesh.

“Do you know,” it croons when it’s done assaulting her eardrums, “I have absolutely no idea. You are lovely, though, and so very…” its voice dips to a silky, insidious murmur – “open- _minded_.”

Sasha bites her lip, hard, until the pain cuts off the moan that wants to escape.

“I’m looking forward to learning more about you, dear assistant,” Michael whispers, the sound echoing around her until she’s reeling, like she’s taken her first step off a teacup ride. “I’m looking forward to finding out what I _want_.”

It bends down, golden curls catching the glints of amber streetlight as they twine around her face, a hot, suffocating blanket that smells like the inside of a sweetshop, like magic mushroom tea, like something that will twist her up until she forgets her own name. This time, Sasha can’t keep back her moan, and the hair soaks it up greedily.

“We’ll see each other again, dear sweet assistant; wide-eyed, hungry-staring little thing,” it promises, and in that blind and helpless moment, she believes it. “Soon.”

Then it’s gone, sudden as a door slamming shut, and she’s alone in the dark.

Sasha gasps awake, sweaty and trembling like a leaf, duvet damp and clinging to her limbs, so turned on it _hurts_. She shoves her hands under the waistband of her pyjama bottoms, too desperate to bother pulling them off, and thrusts three fingers into herself, where she’s molten and aching. The other hand she presses to her clit, hard pleasure-painful circling motions, as fast as she can, trying to ease the burning, melting, twisting _need_. Every frantic jerk drives her higher, hips arching off the bed and breath coming in wet, gasping pants, until she thinks she can’t possibly contain this much sensation – her nerves will burn out, the billions of synapses that make her self will dissolve into primordial soup, reforming in alien under-sea architecture that will spill out of her skull-

She comes like being thrown off a rollercoaster at its peak, like being a firework, like dying. Every aftershock hits her with the force of a cattle prod, hips spasming upwards as she whines helplessly, a tormented prisoner to her own body. When it finally, finally ends, muscles loosening like ice melting, she barely manages to ease her fingers out of her sodden, hypersensitive cunt before she passes out.

~~~~~

The next afternoon – she’s missed morning, missed it by _hours_ , she can’t remember the last time she slept this deeply – Sasha notices, as she swings her aching legs out of bed, that her running-to-the-shops trainers are lying on the floor of her bedroom. The bottoms are black with mud and dust, and she can see the tracks of that dirt on the floor, leading up to where the discarded shoes are sprawled.

Her throat hurts, just a little, where the dream-Michael came so close to cutting her. When she looks in the mirror, clutching the bathroom sink with pale-knuckled hands, she can see the bruise beginning to flower, purple-black under her skin.

When she leans closer, bloodshot eyes straining to make it out, she could swear it looks like a fractal pattern, expanding through her flesh until it bleeds back into it at the edges. A tiny, painful work of impossible art.

Sasha splashes cold water on her face, and when she swipes the water from her eyes, the bruise is gone.


End file.
